Someone I consider a friend – or would like to consider a friend – sent me this a few weeks ago (14 May): https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_the_new_era_of_positive_psychology

I’ve been going through a bit of a difficult and confusing time for a while. Which got worse at the start of this year, in February.

I had built a box. Attempted to build one. In my mind.

I visualised a steel safe, that I put all my confusion in. It didn’t quite work. So I started building a room. I visualised laying bricks, putting on mortar, and laying another of bricks. Building a house of bricks and concrete (Pouring concrete around the bricks maybe – I wasn’t sure about the specifics. I am not a builder). I was trying to lock-up and contain all these random, conflicting thoughts, feelings, emotions.

When I described what I was trying to do, I was told this was “neuro linguistic programming” – I had inadvertently discovered it and was trying to do it to myself.

I had been spending all my energy trying to build that box, that house. I was mentally reinforcing the walls. I was exhausted all the time. And I had all this work work to do (project & team), additional personal / family worries, and then there was COVID lockdown. I was told – take time off, take a break.

But I ploughed on. I was afraid that if I gave in to how I feel, I’d be lying on the floor crying all the time. And that doesn’t solve any problems or do anyone any good. As it is, I’ve already been crying randomly off and on, sometimes up to 3x a day. The boys would ask me: “Why are you crying, Mama?” And I was running out of random excuses.

I was advised to not box things up, to deal with it, or speak about it. Or to lie down and cry if I need to, because it may help a bit, and get it out.

And so this friend shared this TED talk with me, in the hope of bringing inspiration to me. It was his first TED talk, that he had found inspiring and life changing.

I appreciated the thought. But I cried reading the transcript. And then I cried again listening to TED talk.

Sometimes when wounds are scabbed over, you think things are alright. But when you peel the scab off, you open the raw, gaping wound again, and it’s a mess of flowing bloody and plasma. That’s a little bit how it felt like.

This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

On the Road, Jack Kerouac